A master's student at Beijing Institute of Technology plagiarized a top conference paper by "copying the original text". The school announced: serious academic misconduct, and placed on probation

Yang Jing, Jia Haonan, and Jin Lei sent this from Aofei Temple
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The title, charts, and formulas are exactly the same! The paper is almost word for word!

Some time ago, the plagiarism incident of Zhang XX, a master's student at Beijing Institute of Technology, which was almost "word for word" plagiarism , caused a sensation on the Internet.

Recently, the Graduate School of Beijing Institute of Technology officially released a report on the investigation of this matter:

After full discussion, it was determined that Zhang's "abuse of academic achievement" constituted "serious academic misconduct . "

It was decided to give Zhang a disciplinary punishment of "probation" .

Plagiarism confirmed, the original author shows the evidence

On September 16 this year , a paper titled Label Assignment Distillation for Object Detection was posted on Arxiv .

Label Assignment Refinement for Object Detection , a paper in the field of Computer Vision.

There are three authors on the paper, Gao XX , Zhang XX , and Yan XX . One of the authors, Gao XX, has no institution to which he is affiliated, while the other two authors both indicate that they are affiliated with Beijing Institute of Technology and a certain Jiangsu university .

The pdf of the paper also clearly states that Zhang XX, who is affiliated with Beijing Institute of Technology, and the first author "made equal contributions to the paper" and can be considered as co-first authors.

However, the original author Wang Jianfeng discovered that this paper plagiarized almost word for word his paper submitted to NeurIPS 2020 last year.

The title is exactly the same :

△ The left is a plagiarized paper, and the right is the original text given by the original author, the same below

And The abstracts are highly similar , with only a few words changed:

This is just the beginning of plagiarism. In the main text, almost all the data, pictures, and formulas are "faithfully" copied from Wang Jianfeng's paper.

Moreover, the original author pointed out that the image in the plagiarized paper (on the left) is exactly the same as the original, but the resolution is lower, which is obviously a crude screenshot method.

In addition, the experimental table data is "exactly the same":

The formula is exactly the same:

Even the photos given in the experiment were directly moved here:

It can be said that the paper posted on Arxiv is completely the work of researcher Wang Jianfeng, except that his name is not on it.

In this regard, Wang Jianfeng specifically gave the submission record of NeurIPS 2020 last year:

△ Image source: Zhihu @王剑锋, the same below

And the patent application certificate with time record:

Plagiarism confirmed!

Plagiarism of papers happens from time to time, but in the past it was mostly plagiarism. This time, the author plagiarized the whole paper with crude and unscrupulous means , and openly posted the school organization he belonged to, and even left an email address with his student ID number . It is indeed "unprecedented".

One can't help but wonder, is this a deliberate provocation? Or is he really ignorant of the bottom line of academic ethics?

It seems that none of it makes sense...

What is even more confusing is how the plagiarist obtained this paper.

Because, according to the rules of the NeurIPS organizing committee last year, papers that are not accepted by the conference will not be made public, and the authors themselves have never published the papers.

So some netizens questioned that there might be a problem during the review stage.

The plagiarists and their institutions responded one after another

According to the researcher himself, NeurIPS, the school, and the co-first author Zhang XX have all responded.

The NeurIPS 2020 organizing committee confirmed that none of the paper reviewers, area chairs, or senior area chairs are from the institutions listed in the paper.

Researcher Zhang Jianfeng exposed the issue because in the face of such irrefutable evidence, the author of the paper still refused to admit to intentional plagiarism and only said it was an upload error.

Among them, co-first author Zhang XX contacted him through various channels, but his statements were inconsistent and his attitude was unacceptable to him.

In his response, Zhang XX first admitted that he did submit the paper to Arxiv, but that it was submitted in PDF format by mistake . He did not mention where he got the paper from, nor did he mention whether this involved academic misconduct.

Secondly, he denied that he deliberately plagiarized , saying that he was just doing a favor for the first author and posted it on Arxiv. He was "new to" the academic process and was not familiar with it. If there is any suspicion of plagiarism, he should find the first author to argue.

However, as a co - author and a master's degree holder from a well-known 985 university, it is unacceptable that he was unaware that the entire article was plagiarized and claimed that he was not familiar with the relevant scientific research procedures. In the eyes of the original author, this is an attempt to get away with it.

The most outrageous thing is that Zhang XX insisted that he did not plagiarize intentionally because he only participated in part of the code and experiments. But the original author angrily asked, since the experimental pictures, data, and results were all copied exactly, how could it be an experiment?

Therefore, although Zhang XX apologized to the original author and offered compensation, his attitude of shirking responsibility and hoping that the original author would withdraw the report letter to the school is unacceptable.

△ Zhang XX avoided talking about the key questions raised by the original author

Afterwards, the first author who was not affiliated with an organization also contacted the original author, but still insisted that it was an "upload error."

After the original author reported the plagiarist to the school involved, he received an official response.

Beijing Institute of Technology, where Zhang XX works, said that the school and the college attached great importance to the case and had initiated the investigation process. The school immediately set up a working group and hoped that researcher Zhang Jianfeng would provide further evidence.

Now, judging from the official announcement, Zhang XX’s academic misconduct has been confirmed.

Netizen: It’s terrifying when you think about it

Regarding this incident, netizens' first reaction was outrageous and magical .

First of all, the arxiv platform means occupying a pit——

Claim on the Internet that the innovative design of the article came from oneself.

As @牧瀬紅莉栖 said,

This is not a journal published by academic review, so it makes no sense for them to upload it to arxiv.

Second, copying the entire text is not acceptable .

As Zhihu netizen @电光幻影炼金术 said,

For a novice researcher, general mistakes or partial imitation are understandable, but copying the entire article is unacceptable.

If it is not discovered, the copyright of this article will be taken away by the plagiarist (because the plagiarist is the first to make it public)

If this incident did not happen to a Zhihu celebrity, but to more scientific researchers on the front line, the path to defending rights would be even more difficult.

Therefore, on the one hand, netizens believe that tutors should strengthen academic integrity education for students.

On the other hand, the school should not only deal with these students seriously, but also conduct a comprehensive inspection and cleansing.

While being shocked by the absurdity of the incident, the more horrifying thing is that:

How did the plagiarist get the unpublished paper that was still under review?

Some netizens said that the most likely explanation at present is that the plagiarist bought the manuscript from a paper institution and thought he could use it directly.

Zhihu netizen @Vam thought of the ghostwriting industry chain abroad, and the most direct consequence is the decline in academic standards.

The result of this industry is that the level of international students has dropped significantly, and the value of their degrees has also dropped. This is not only unfair to serious students, but also extremely harmful to the reputation of the education industry.

Australia, where the ghostwriting industry was previously the most rampant, has enacted severe legislation to crack down on it, with participants facing a maximum penalty of two years in prison .

In this regard, he also called for relevant departments to conduct a strict investigation of these institutions if it is confirmed that there is paper buying and selling behind this incident.

What do you think about this matter?

Reference links:
https://www.zhihu.com/question/487690998 https://www.zhihu.com/people/wjfwzzc https://www.zhihu.com/question/487690998/answer/2128168528 https://www.zhihu.com/question/487690998/answer/2129227928 https://www.zhihu.com/question/487690998/answer/2129912473

The Graduate School of Beijing Institute of Technology announced the results: https://grd.bit.edu.cn/xwgz/xwtzgg/3944e225b5824d31a7297657760d1b3d.htm